Refresh stream without refreshing page

Features and Ideas
1

As so often happens to me, this has probably been discussed already, and I am unknowingly kicking a dead horse. If this is the case, just point me in the direction of previous conversation and we can stop wasting our time.

TO THE POINT!

Now that chat has been mainlined pretty hard, it might be time to figure out a way to keep a chat session going, i.e. keep from logging out of the XMPP server when refreshing the stream.

Could there be a way to refresh the stream without refreshing the page? I’m thinking of a refresh button somewhere.

Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.

2

I agree!

Maybe simply clicking on the menu links (like “Stream”, “My Activity”, “My Aspects”, etc.) would load the page asynchronously and load it without refreshing the whole page (most modern websites do that now, Deezer, Sonerezh, Google+, …)

Also it would be nice to have an icon/button saying that there are newer posts ala Google+. I’m sure that in the end it could reduce the load on the server because the users won’t hit refresh all the time and load the exact same page 9 times out of 10.

3

If you don’t mind using a greasemonkey userscript, you should take a look at diaspora auto update. It will update the stream when new posts are available.

Of course, it’d be nice to have this in core but, it’s certainly a viable work around for now. :wink:

4

Thanks. I think that’ll do in the meantime, but I’d like to see it implemented by default, and perhaps in a slightly different way.

5

I think the base issue is that the chat session gets interrupted when a page is refreshed or the users navigates from one page to another. The proposal to auto-refresh the stream only addresses one use case of this issue.

The ideal situation would be to enable the chat pane to stay active even when the users moves from one page to another in Diaspora - for example, by clicking on a timestamp to view a post in SPV, or clicking a tag to view the tag stream, or a user profile.

6

Unlike twitter I don’t think we must need to scroll to top to see new posts, we must come up with UX where a person can click on a link and see new post pop up just like that.

7

Perhaps if the Stream button could have a red number in the upper-right corner, indicating that there are new posts, and if the nav bar could auto-update…

8

^ Agreeing with Chris. Whenever an update (e.g. new message, new notification) arrives it should be indicated in the navbar. And ideally, I don’t even need to refresh the page but simply click on “Notifications” in order to see the updates in there in the pop-up window.

9

Proposal: Stream auto-update notifications

Basically, I propose that, rather than refreshing the page to see if there are notifications, the Stream button could have a red number in the upper-right corner, indicating that there are new posts, and if the nav bar could auto-update when there are new notifications or PMs.

Outcome:

Votes:

  • Yes: 15
  • Abstain: 1
  • No: 1
  • Block: 0

Note: This proposal was imported from Loomio. Vote details, some comments and metadata were not imported. Click here to view the proposal with all details on Loomio.

10

In Friendica we have implemented this in two ways. At first we show a number of new posts at the top of the page (in the style of the notifications) that is constantly updated so that people always see if there is something new. @chris26 In Friendica it is mostly like you said.

Additionally we do an automatic refresh if the person is at the very top of the page and hadn’t scrolled down a little bit. This refresh can be turned of by the users since there are mixed feelings about this feature.

11

@timoses , you’re right. The list itself does update. Just need the number.

I feel like someone might bring up the issue of server load. Anyone care to shed light on that subject in regards to this proposal?

12

If grease monkey plugin can do it without meteor, we can use the same Ruby on Rails platform to do it.

13

This requires users to have an addon installed in their browser. For example GNUSocial does not require this from users.

14

I don’t think there needs to be any vote on whether to enable some means of updating content on the page (posts, notifications, etc) without refreshing the entire page, as this is not a controversial issue - probably everyone wants it.

The issue is how best to implement it technically. We can certainly discuss that here, or contribute technical solutions to the existing GitHub ticket for this feature.

15

@CSammy: That is the reason why I hardly don’t use Loomio in matters of Diaspora. To discuss here is in most cases no more than a sham fight with no real impact.

16

To clarify my vote: goob did a good job at explaining it over there, thank you goob.

As for technical reasons why this is wanted (among others): A background request to update the stream is a lot less traffic and computing time intensive than to refresh the entire page. The chat argument is a valid point as well, though there is more to that.